Fresh off the first E3 conference comes the confirmation of the Halo collection called Halo: Master Chief Collection only for Xbox One which comes out November 11th 2014.
On a single disc is Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo 4 all rendered in 60 frames per second and running at 1080p resolution on Xbox One. Each game will run on its own engine and includes some of those loved exploits, button combinations (like the BXR) and other glitches as they were when their respective games came out. During a presentation in Los Angeles last month, 343's Frank O'Conner touched on this topic. "Any quirks or tricks that you had learned over the years, they're still going to be in there," he said. "It should feel almost verbatim. There'll be some tiny little changes, render changes or some weird jump bug.
Being that it is Halo 2's anniversary, that campaign is the focus of the HD collection. Part of that anniversary treatment includes six complete remakes of maps from Halo 2, built from scratch for the Xbox One. In that case, it will not run on the original Halo 2 engine. It's considered a bonus experience. Similar to Halo: Combat Evolved's anniversary edition, you'll be able to switch between New and Classic modes in Halo 2's HD campaign. That means that with the click of a button, you can instantaneously see what Halo 2 used to look like ten years ago. And then with another click, you can switch right back to the HD version.
The HD collection will also include more story elements than the original games included. They're doing this in three forms: terminals in Halo 2's campaign, bookend cinematic with a new epilogue and prologue, and an episodic digital series called Nightfall that will release weekly, starting with the November 11 release of the collection. Some of this information will contextualize and set the course of Halo 5: Guardians, so we're sure to see some teasers for what's to come in that future storyline. Altogether, the Nightfall series should add up to about the length of a standard feature film, though they haven't determined how many episodes there will be.
This digital series, Halo: Nightfall, is in collaboration with executive producer Ridley Scott and director Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. It'll introduce some new characters that will supposedly play interesting roles in the next chapter of the Halo universe.
As part of the "extras" menu in the master UI, which includes these cinematics, the HD collection will also come with access to the Halo 5 multiplayer beta that will run for a limited time.